Busted last week for using public data to try to shame constituents who disagreed with her participation in a Black Lives Matter protest at the Mall of America, Alondra Cano is sorry…

…that all you dissenters are such racisssss rubes:

“It was not my intent to put anyone in danger by any means, and this was not an attempt to punish anyone,” Cano said. “But it was actually an attempt to have a public conversation about the importance of Black Lives Matter and how the public should continue to have that debate publicly without fear of having to hide your thoughts behind some rationale that doesn’t make sense.”

“…behind some rationale that doesn’t make sense”.  Hmmm.

Of course, her “public conversation” talk would seem less bullshit-y if Cano actually had a conversation.  She didn’t. She took the four dissenters contact information from a city server, and published it on Twitter – which is sort of like “having a conversation” with someone after you’ve hung up the phone with them.

And her “conversation” – like Heather Martens and Kim Norton before her – is, of course, a monologue; everyone who criticized her on Twitter got blocked; she responded to no media requests.

Which is an interesting response for someone who claims “”I did it out of a belief in government transparency and public discourse”;  intimidate dissenters, ignore questioners, hide from reporters.

Joe Doakes, or someone claiming to be Joe Doakes (you’ll see what I mean) emails:

I called the City of St. Paul’s Forestry department to ask them to look at my boulevard tree to see it if needed trimming.

They came promptly, trimmed the branches overhanging my house, raked up the twigs and hauled the mess away.  I admit it: I was pleasantly surprised so I wrote to thank them and copied my city council rep.

There’s an awful lot the City does wrong, but when they do something right, they deserve the credit.  Good job, guys.

Joe Doakes

There’s little opportunity for graft, and no political empires to be built, in city forestry – so I suspect that the city’s foresters are top-notch employees who deserve a hearty “kudos”.

Las Vegas restaurant turns limones into limonade; they turned surveillance footage of a recent break-in into one of the funniest commercials ever:

And now I’m hungry.

Over the holiday week, this story – “Here’s Why You Shouldn’t Lie To Your Kids About Santa“, by Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry – was making the rounds on social media.

According to Mr. Gobry – who, in common with a distressing number of people who lecture parents about how they should raise their kids, let the record show, has no children actually has a kid, will miracles never cease – says it’s all wrong because our rationalizations are all incorrect.

To wit:

The argument goes something like this: lying to children is bad.

Gobry thinks that the Santa story is “lying to children”.  We’ll come back to that.

It’s not just a story. Parents usually defend the Santa lie by saying that it’s just a story, like Snow White. But there’s a difference between fiction and lying.

And there’s a difference between both and “shared cultural traditions”.

It doesn’t do anything for their imagination. This is usually the next line of defense: tricking kids about Santa somehow helps their imagination. But that makes no sense. You’re not asking kids to actually imagine anything, you’re feeding them beliefs.

So what?  We “feed” our kids all sorts of beliefs; “Because I’m daddy, that’s why”, “don’t trust strangers unless they’re in  uniform”, “Jesus loves me, this I know…”, and of course, “honesty is the best policy”.  We look forward to the day when they think critically – but that’s down the road a bit, and until then, we need them to know some things  just because.

Who cares if it’s tradition? For a very long time, tradition included such smart education principles as “spare the rod, spoil the child.” Now our society doesn’t believe in beating children — and that’s a good thing.

Right.  Santa’s just like that.

Families that celebrate Christmas should have Christmas traditions! …You don’t need to invent a supersonic fat man to show your children you love them.

And if Gobry thinks that’s why we still have “Santa”, then this is going to be a difficult conversation indeed.

It’s bad tactics. From the parents’ purely self-interested perspective, the Santa lie is just dumb parenting. First of all, it erodes your trust capital. Once your kids discover that you were actively lying to them for several years, how much do you think they’ll trust you?

To be honest, this is the part where I figured out Gobry has never raised a kid in his life.  He honestly thinks kids, after about 12, need any single reason not to trust their parents?  And that they won’t seek out other reasons like a Dave Matthews fan looking for Cheetos?

The Santa lie is also used to control children: if you’re “good” you’ll get presents, and if you’re “naughty” you won’t. But really, has that ever worked?

Any parent who uses “Santa Claus” seriously, with a straight face, to “control” childrens’ behavior, as opposed to “a fun excuse to share a fun moment with the family once a year”, and maybe “as a shared inside joke with other parents”, is heading for much bigger problems.

It’s just morally wrong. Sorry to repeat ourselves, but lying to children is just wrong. It is. Just because someone is gullible is no reason to lie to them, and children have a right not to be deceived like everyone else. You can make a case for some “white lies” but the Santa lie is not a white lie. It’s just a lie.

Oh, it’s not a white lie.  Glad you cleared that up for all of us, Mr. Gobry.

Actually, I think not having Santa in their lives is a moral wrong.  Yes, eventually they, like most kids, figure out that their parents have been pulling a fast one on them.  The smart kids figure out “my parents spent all those years getting up in the wee hours to put this little hint of magic in my life, because they wanted to see me be happy.  That’s odd – but the odd bit of happiness was sure cool!”   The not-so-smart ones get neurotic about Christmas and become NPR listeners – but then, if “Santa” doesn’t do it, something will.  And the real dumb ones never quite lose the idea that some beneficent supernatural being brings them stuff for nothing, and go on to support Bernie Sanders.

And why does the “always be honest with kids” thing stop with Santa Claus?  Why are we not telling our kids “There’s a 50-50 chance Mommy and I will wind up divorced”, or “Remember, Sophia, that a meteor could wipe us all out someday!”, or “You will very likely die of a chronic, wasting disease, in a nursing home, hooked up to tubes”?

I mean, is complete, utter, academically-transparent honesty with kids the best policy, or not?

And even if it’s a lie, then learning to deal with cognitive dissonance without falling apart is one of life’s great lessons.  If a kid falls apart because “my parents lied to me about Santa Claus”?  Then the kid isn’t “falling apart because of Santa Claus”, if you catch my drift.

And, frankly, I think dealing, eventually, with the fact that Santa might not be real is a great lesson for kids; having to come to terms with the fact that not all of life is black and white, and that we all have to wrestle with cognitive dissonance, is one of life’s most vital lessons.  I pity the poor kid who doesn’t figure this out until they get rejected by a college or turned down for a promotion or dumped by a boyfriend.

It’s selfish. That’s the biggest reason. Despite their protestations to the contrary, parents don’t do it for the benefit of the children. They do it for their own benefit. When pressed and rebutted, parents will eventually blurt out “But they’re so cute when they believe in Santa!” That’s the real reason, isn’t it?

Yep.  It’s a reason.   Not the reason, but one of them.

So what?

Mr. Gobry doesn’t know it, and I suspect never will, but when you have a kid, you’re signing up for eighteen years of joy – and eighteen years of sleepless nights, vacation days spent with sick kids, evenings in urgent care, birthday parties, out-of-tune concerts, looking through hair for nits, puberty, tension, “tough love”, shouting matches, junior high rebellion, head-butting and exhaustion.

You’re damn right I took a moment once a year to enjoy one of the short list of pure unadulterated episodes of crystalline happiness that the whole experience offers.  And f**k you, Pascal-Emanuel “childfree fop” Gobry, for thinking you know better.

UPDATE:  Sure enough, PEG has a kid.

Doesn’t change my point.

How many police killings are a combination of bad shooting habits (most usually violation of absolute imperative to “keep your finger off the trigger until you’re ready to shoot”) and a gun that is designed to shoot, with absolute reliability, after a short trigger stroke?

It’s a good question.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Some of us on the Right obsess about legal theories, which makes normal people’s eyes glaze over.  But the legal theories courts use make a difference not only in the present case, but in future cases where the theory is accepted as legitimate precedent.

A job requirement which appears innocent on its face, but which disqualifies an unusually high percentage of certain historically disadvantaged groups, is said to have a “disparate impact” and therefore constitutes unconstitutional discrimination.

For example, the job requirement that firefighters must be able to drag a heavy weight a long distance eliminates most female applicants.  In order for the job requirement to remain, the employer must show that dragging a heavy weight a long distance is a legitimate job requirement (it is, as you know if you’ve ever tried to handle a charged fire hose, much less lug an unconscious victim out the window of a burning building, down a ladder and across a lawn to safety).  There is no “team lift” on a ladder – you carry the victim or leave him to die.

Plaintiff’s lawyers love the legal theory of “disparate impact” because it doesn’t require proof intent to discriminate, only proof of unequal results.  The theory has been stretched to apply to housing and lending and now, to school discipline.

Black parents complained that Black students are suspended at higher rates than other students (see chart below).  They claim the school’s discipline policies have a disparate impact on Black students and therefore constitute racial discrimination.

In response, St. Paul schools seem to have adopted a policy that Black students would not be suspended, even for repeated attacks on other students, faculty and staff.  Violent students quickly got the message: thugs won’t be punished, violence exploded, there is no discipline.

Recently, a St. Paul teacher was attacked by a student and suffered a concussion.  The teacher is suing the school for adopting policies that create an unsafe workplace and I wouldn’t be surprised if the teacher’s union strikes for workplace safety.

This is what happens when liberal judges let liberal plaintiffs impose liberal social values on society through litigation instead of education to pass legislation.  A theory that gave like-minded Liberals in the courtroom an excuse to impose social engineering is wreaking havoc in a classroom and nobody is accountable for the foreseeable consequences that are causing real damage to the next generation’s educational success.  Any parent that can afford to flee the system, has.  The only children left are those with nowhere to go and no way out.

For shame.

Joe Doakes

And if you still have your kids in that plague-ship of a district, I gotta ask why.

A Minnesota court rules the police need a warrant to get a urine test after a DUI arrest.Slowly, Minnesota’s “implied consent” law – a statute so sweeping, draconian and intrusive that Vladimir Lenin jumped from his grave and yelled “dial it back a little, Minnesota!” is flaking away.

Good riddance.

Lemmy Kilmister of Mötörhead dead at 70.

Lemmy was lead vocalist, bassist, principal songwriter and the founding, and the only constant member of Motörhead since the band’s formation in 1975. To date, Motörhead have released twenty studio albums and achieved 30 million in sales worldwide. Their last record, Bad Magic, was released in August 2015.

Over forty years, Kilmister was simultaneously one of the gödfathers of speed metäl and pünk.

Motörhead saw far more commercial success in the UK, though they achieved a cult status in the US. Their ferocious hard-rock style rejuvenated the metal genre in the late 1970s and inspired everyone from Metallica to Guns N’ Roses to Dave Grohl. Albums such as Ace of Spades, Orgasmatron, and Rock N’ Roll were critically lauded, though ironically the band’s only Grammy Award came via a cover of Metallica’s “Whiplash”, which they recorded for a tribute CD.

They were cult figures in the US – but I remember going to Europe in 1983.  And while that was a great year for a lot of bands – U2, Little Steven, Duran Duran, Madness, Big Country and many others – what band did I see in the most graffiti, all over Europe, from Scotland to Switzerland?

Yep.  Mötörhead.

Kilmister bragged of drinking a bottle of whiskey a day for the past forty years, and was a vocal advocate of amphetamines.  As such, he makes Keith Richard look like Pat Boone.

And that’s the real kick in the teeth.  Rock stars – in the romance of the genre – aren’t supposed to die of cancer at 70.  They’re supposed to go out in a blaze of alcohol-and-drug-fueled glory at 29.

We’ll always have “Ace of Spades”.

RI whatever passes for P in your worldview, Lemmy.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

People who enter the United States without proper documentation (sneaking across the border from Mexico, for example) can apply for affirmative political asylum.  Asylum decisions are made by immigration court but the system is swamped so applicants are given a notice to appear for a future court date and released.  While the court case is pending, they can live anywhere in the country and can work while waiting for a decision.  If they miss their court date, or if they appear but fail to persuade the court, they are denied asylum and an order is issued to remove them from the country.  The Obama administration reports these people as “deported” and claims this proves the administration has been vigorously enforcing the immigration law.

But many who were ordered to leave do not leave, maybe as many as a million.  Failure to obey the court order is a crime: they are now truly illegal aliens.  They hide in sanctuary cities, where law enforcement is forbidden to check their status.  They work illegally, shop at food shelves, feed their children at public school – three meals a day in some districts – and receive medical care at emergency rooms. They are waiting for the next wave of amnesty.

After months of pounding by Donald Trump, President Obama now proposes to enforce those court orders by finding and removing the people who have exhausted their due process rights and shouldn’t be in the United States any more.  Democrats are aghast.

My question: what is the Democrat vision of America?  If we refuse to exercise control over our borders, if we reject the immigration court’s decision, if we accept any immigrant at any time for any reason . . . what makes us America anymore?

Joe Doakes

They’re trying to obscure that as fast as they can.

Listen to, or read, the left talking about gun control for a while.  (It’s OK if you don’t want to; I do it so you don’t have to).

You eventually run into three basic tracks of thought:

1. The Stupid Track:  Best summed up by lefty commenter and triteness merchant John Fugelsang’s line “I don’t have a gun because I’m satisfied with my penis size”.  Which is typical of this crowd; we’re trying to save lives, lower crime and secure liberty, and they’re focused on genitals.  Conversation is difficult, and pointless, and of dubious utility with people this smugly (and unjustifiably), er, self-satisfied.
2. The Thundering Herd:  The vast swarm of (often) well-meaning people whose only frame of reference is what they hear in the media; “we’ve got to dooooooo something”, “gun show loopholes”, “355 mass murders so far this year” and other chanting points.  Many are otherwise intelligent people who’ve been swayed by the “Lie First, Lie Always” campaign of emotional manipulation that gun controllers have been running for decades.
3. The Root Causers:  The are the ones that swerve into Deep Thoughts.  Their latest?  Rumination about this nation’s “Gun Culture”.

Let’s talk about #III for a bit.

Culcha:  The notion that America has a “Gun Culture” – a part of society that embraces guns on a social, intellectual and philosophical level – isn’t an earth-shaking one.  A significant part of this country…:

• Believes the Second Amendment recognizes a right granted us by our creator, whatever that is
• Owns guns, and treats them like utilitarian tools
• Makes shooting sports – hunting, target shooting, self-defense training – a part of their lives, shooting for relaxation, fun, exercise,  mental stimulation, food, and personal and family security
• Passes these beliefs down through the generations, making shooting sports and self-defense a part of family life
• Believes that guns in the hands of the law-abiding are an awesome responsibility, with horrendous consequences for misuse, but immense benefits for legal, proper use
• Passionately defends the right to keep and bear arms, supporting gun rights groups with their time, money and political interest in numbers that many other grassroots movements would love to be able to harness.

The “gun culture” is stereotypically a rural trait – but it extends throughout America; there are advocates and activists, as well as passive members, in the largest, most blue-choked cities.

Politically, the “gun culture” is associated with conservatives – and that’s largely true.  But there are plenty who don’t care in the least about politics – and more importantly, enough on the left, especially in politically schizoid states like Minnesota who vote DFL but who support not only the shooting sports, but the armed lifestyle, to make the Minnesota Legislature, split down the middle on partisan lines, a fairly to strongly pro-2nd-Amendment body, especially outside the hapless Twin Cities DFL contingent.

And while decades ago the “gun culture” was associated with the America’s blue collar class, today it crosses most social and class lines, except the academic class and the exceptionally wealthy (who can afford all the security they want).  At its best, it’s best described by this quote from Tolkein:

“I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Two Towers

So the “gun culture” is relatively easy to identify.  It’s big, it’s passionate about its politics, and it’s been emboldened – some might say “rendered complacent” – by twenty years of relative political success.   It’s support for the Second Amendment is a mile wide and a mile deep.  It is an electoral buzz saw that has cut many a gun-grabbing politician (outside of America’s crime-choked urban cores) off at the knees.   Naturally, it’s also a common boogeyman for the left.

But what about its counterpart?

Objectors Without Object:   There is most definitely an “anti-gun culture” in the US.  It’s no more socially homogenous than the “gun culture”; it includes Hollywood titans, suburban grandées, inner-city political activists, and a whole lot of people in between.

But like the “gun culture”, they share some traits.

They are more or less illiterate about the Second Amendment:  some believe the Amendment is irrelevant; others, that it’s archaic (the whole “the founding fathers never envisioned AK47s” bit), some just don’t care.

Guns and their use are more or less foreign to them.  Don’t get me wrong; shooters can get pretty pedantic about gun terms and parts.  On the other hand, it’s hard to have a literate, much less productive, conversation with people who mix up “semi-automatic” with “machine gun”, or who think a thirty-round magazine makes a firearm uniquely deadly.

But Jonah Goldberg, in an excellent piece in National Review, notes that while part of America regards guns as just another tool, to another part they are utterly foreign and associated only with crime.

And too many of them take that fear out in the form of smug condescension:

The Second Amendment, Washington Post columnist Gene Weingarten wrote, is “the refuge of bumpkins and yeehaws who like to think they are protecting their homes against imagined swarthy marauders desperate to steal their flea-bitten sofas from their rotting front porches.”

Almost but not quite too stupid for Minnesota Progressive Project.

Many are just afraid of guns.  Being afraid of guns isn’t especially irrational; they are intimidating machines.  The irrationality comes from wanting to take them away from everyone else.

For the most part, they believe that guns are too dangerous for regular people – until those same people strap on a badge or a uniform, and become infallible.

They largely believe, deep down inside, when push comes to shove, that citizens shouldn’t have guns, and that government legitimately claims a monopoly on the use of force.

There’s one other key difference; beyond a few hyperactivists, it’s just not that big a deal to most anti-gunners.  They may oppose guns of one kind or another, to one degree or another.  They may be scared of…something, and advocate some regulation or another than one of another “leader” has proposed.  But for most of them, their support for restrictions on the law-abiding is a mile wide and an inch deep.

Ill-Informed Hysterics With Short Attention Spans:  So this combination of dilatory, poorly-read passion, slopped on top of intense fear spread by social convention (not a whole lot different than racial bigotry, when you take it apart) has yielded a small, badly-informed, but intensely powerful political force that exerts a disproportionate, universally deleterious effect on American politics.

And as it did when large minorities of American society smoked cigarettes, hated black people or treated women like chattel, it’s going to take a huge education program and changes in Americans’ attitudes to send our intractable anti-gun culture where it belongs – history’s scrap heap, along with the Klan and the glass ceiling.

Mark Zuckerberg’s celebrated hundred million dollar gift to the Newark NJ schools worked about as well as any huge influx of more-mundane taxpayer cash ever did; not at all.

Zuckerberg’s donation was earmarked toward merit pay, charter schools, and systemic reforms.  The charter schools worked well, but the city’s system for putting kids into charters was a goat rodeo.  The reform money got swallowed up by consulting fees.  And as to merit pay and teacher accountability?

Instead, the opposite occurred. Chris Cerf, the New Jersey commissioner of education at the time, worked with the Legislature and was able to negotiate some new accountability measures in teacher contracts.

But the teachers’ union only agreed upon those measures if the seniority protections remained intact.

Which meant that the teacher accountability money went to reinforce…unaccountability with teachers.

Reforming the public system, under its current politicized leadership, is like trying to argue with a blizzard.

Minneapolis ninth Ward representative Alondra Cano likes to paint herself as the champion of the underprivileged…

…while availing herself of that most excellent privilege, awesome vacations on the taxpayers dime.

(And that other awesome liberal privilege, using the government she works for to strong-arm those she disagrees with, all the while claiming to be the victim).

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Students at Oberlin College are upset at the food in the cafeteria.  Not because it sucks – it’s institutional food, suckage is a given – but because the recipes aren’t as good as Mom’s and that makes the college guilty of a ghastly infliction of culinary cultural appropriation. 

 I wonder if the bad food is helping them keep off the Freshman Fifteen, or if they’re like the Marine who wrote a letter to his mother: “The food here is awful, and such small portions!”

 I note the contrast between the student’s petition and my Dad’s favorite tune from the Army:

 The sushi at the college

They say is mighty keen

The fish is hard, the rice is mush

And tastes like kerosene

 Oh, I don’t want no more of college life

Gee, but I want to go,

But Mom won’t let me go,

Gee, but I want to go, home.

 Soldiers faced bad food with humor; students pretend bad food justifies moral outrage, I scoff at whining students as crybabies.  God help them the first time they tell their spouses “It’s not as good as my Mom’s cooking.”

 Joe Doakes

“Mothers” are a form of cultural appropriation.  Trigger warning.  Check your privilege.

Check and mate.

Sunday morning services had already concluded by the time the small British torpedo boats the HMS Mimi and HMS Toutou had left their port on the massive freshwater Lake Tanganyika in the Belgian Congo.  Having changed out of his Naval dress uniform and back into his usual garb of short-sleeves and a skirt (which he wrongly thought was a kilt), British Captain Geoffrey Spicer-Simson began hunting his intended prey – the German gunboat Kigani.

But the Kigani had been on its way to intercept them, and was surprised to see the small British “fleet” racing out to meet them.  In 11 quick minutes, the Kigani had been critically damaged; a shell having ripped through her deck, killing the gunboat’s captain and petty officers.  The Kigani withdrew her colors – a sign she intended to surrender.  Not content with his prey’s brief battle, Simson ordered the small wooden Mimi to ram the metal gunboat.  The Mimi‘s bow was significantly dented; Simson’s ego definitely was not.

Returning to shore, Simson, wearing a German officer’s ring he stole from one of the dead, proclaimed himself the “Horatio Nelson of Africa.”  The day after Christmas in 1915, the battle for Lake Tanganyika – the second largest freshwater lake in the world by volume – was almost over.  The battle for historic acclaim from one of the most eccentric (and incompetent) British officers in the Great War had begun.

—

Graf von Gotzen’s crew loads her 4-inch deck gun.  The weapon dwarfed anything the British or Belgians could wield in East Africa

Despite some of the first shots in the Great War being fired in Africa, the Entente had made little progress in removing the German threat to their colonial possessions.  In German East Africa, Lt. Paul Emil von Lettow-Vorbeck, who would soon become famous for his prolonged defense, had gone on the offensive, attacking and defeating the Indian Expeditionary Force sent to subdue him with an army eight times Lettow-Vorbeck’s size.   (more…)

Today, the Northern Alliance Radio Network – America’s first grass-roots talk radio show – we’ll be taking the Christmas holiday off.

I’ll be running a “best of”.

Brad will be live tomorrow, and his guests will include Jim Abeler, who is running against Andy Aplikowski in the primary leading up to the special election in Senate District 35.

Enjoy your time with your familes, and we’ll see you next week!

…please remember to spare a prayer for people who are celebrating Christmas in places where people of faith live under the daily jackboot of repression::

Seasons Greetings to you and yours from all of us here at SITD!

Even the Strib has noted that real people are not amused about Alonda Cano’s abuse of power yesterday.

As I had hoped, one of the people she doxxed – Mr. Dent – is filing an ethics complaint with the city:

Stephen Dent, who said he had previously contributed to Cano’s campaign, wrote to her and told Cano she was unfit to serve on the council by “closing private property” and “supporting illegal actions.”

Cano then tweeted Dent’s email address and phone number to her roughly 2,000 followers.

“What she did to me and others put a huge chill on our democratic society,” Dent said in a phone interview early Thursday. “It has broken my trust with public officials in the city of Minneapolis.”

Attempts to reach Cano Thursday morning were not successful.

Oh, I just bet they weren’t.

First things (ahem) first: Jay Furst, the top editor at the Rochester (MN) Post-Bulletin, and I go way back, more or less.  He was working at the Jamestown Sun back when I was at my first radio job, during the tail end of the Carter administration.  When I moved to the Cities, he was working as a PR guy, and gave me some useful advice for breaking into the big city.  I’ve always known him to be a good reporter.

And like any good reporter, he’s not to be denied a story that he has every right to cover:

Rule No. 1 for public meetings: Don’t tell reporters they can’t be there…A new local group called the Coalition Against the DMC had an organizational meeting at VFW Post 1215 Thursday night. One of the organizers, Diana Friemann, put a public notice in the Post-Bulletin calendar of events last week, for print and online, to announce the meeting…The item said where, when and what the meeting was about, and Friemann was listed as the contact. It said, “Help stop the tax-and-spend agenda of DMC.”

That sounded like an interesting meeting, so a P-B reporter contacted her to learn more. Friemann told him the media wasn’t welcome at the event and wouldn’t be allowed to report on it, and she asked not to be identified…

Well, that’s not the way America works. You can’t call a public meeting and then tell reporters not to show up. You can try to keep us out — you can put a guard at the door, frisk me for my reporter’s notebook, take my camera — but all you’ll do is assure that a story will run. We might not get all the information, but we’ll report that something happened.

As long has Hillary Clinton or Mark Dayton have nothing to do with it…but I digress.

Seriously – bully!  Kudos!  That is, in theory, what the Fourth Estate is supposed to do!  It’s their First Amendment right – not to get censored by government – and it’s their job!

So let’s fast-forward to this past Monday night.  Furst organized – as he has, monthly, for about ten years now – a public forum at a Rochester library to discuss Kim Norton’s Bloomberg-issued gun grab proposals.  Oddly, although a number of people at the forefront of Minnesota’s 2nd Amendment movement offered to come to Rochester to speak for the good guys, Furst declined, preferring to have people from the Rochester area.  Oddly, representing the 2nd Amendment movement at the event was…a Twin Cities area gun trainer who is apparently a great guy but not necessarily a public speaker, and Representative Duane Quam – one of the good guys in the Legislature who has earned his “A” ratings from every  rights group that matters, but not someone whose rhetorical style is compared to Jeremiah Wright.

Anyway – if we Second Amendment supporters have learned anything over the years, it’s “control your narrative” – which means control your sources.  Which means get your own sources; your own video, your own copies of numbers, everything. Trust no-one, least of all government, even less of all media, to tell a true, accurate story.

And so the various Second Amendment freedom groups urged their supporters to videotape the presentation, to capture for ourselves all the inaccuracies and fabrications Rep. Norton was sure to issue.

And they did . Which is where Furst picks up the story, in a piece from this past Tuesday in the Post/Bulletin.

The guy sitting next to me at the front table had a pistol on his hip, and I’ll assume there were other guns in the room as well. Nobody who wanted to carry a gun was turned away from our Dialogues event. Nobody got kicked out. I just asked in advance that people choose not to carry. I’ll assume a number of people ignored that, and certainly one of our panelists did.

Yeah, Mr. Furst – the Second Amendment is on a par in every way with the First Amendment.  And if you tell us we can’t exercise our rights in a place – a public one! – where we have every right to, we’re going to practice it twice as hard.

Sound familiar?

There were Rochester police officers on hand to check permits to carry, though I don’t know that any were checked.

Because most cops know that law-abiding citizens with carry permits are safer than law-abiding citizens without ’em.

Nobody’s rights were infringed, but the library — our host for the event — appreciated my request that people leave their guns at home.

So let’s get this straight; we’re utterly absolutist about some civil rights, but extremely casual about others?

Anyway – by way of “controlling the narrative”, some of the Civil Rights activists came with cameras:

Interestingly, when I arrived that night, a man had set up a video camera in the front row, intending to tape it (as was recommended by a Minnesota gun rights lobby)…Then I learned that in fact the library has a policy not to allow videotaping for privacy reasons, which is their right,

Precisely as it was the right of the group in Furst’s first piece to request no media be present; i.e., not at all, if they’re in a public place.

They can ask. Should they be asking the public to park their civil rights at the door, in a place where they have every legal right to be?

though the library in fact videotapes the Dialogues events (and makes people aware that videotaping occurs).  They asked him not to use his camera; he refused.

Which brings us back to the “control your content” bit.  When the DFL power structure wants evidence to disappear, then voilá, it disappears.

I asked him myself and he said it was a library policy, not a statute or higher law, and he’d videotape if he pleased. He was fairly cold and crisp about it.

As any reporter would be when asked not to to their job, in a public place, at a public event, at a place they have every right to be at.

It’s a simple fact; we can not trust the media or this state’s public institutions to tell the people the truth about this issue.  It’s not necessarily due to bias (although there is plenty of that out there too); most reporters in this state don’t know the difference between a magazine and a clip.  When Kim Norton says something like “we need to ban exploding bullets”, most reporters will nod and write “Kim Norton addressed the plague of exploding bullets”.  They don’t know any better.

Now, just about every blogger, talk show host and activist has had this conversation with someone in the media; the media figure will respond “but you’re not a reporter”.

To which we, the people, need to respond “On this issue, yes I am.  I can actually tell the story to the people who weren’t here and don’t know, accurately and fairly (and “fairness” and “bias” aren’t necessarily incompatible).  People reading/watching my account will get a more accurate, more knowledgable, more complete, and fairer picture of what happened here than they will from reading/watching yours.  There is nothing about your tin ‘journalist’ badge that gives you a first class seat on the First Amendment plane”.

After the event, he thanked me and said he didn’t intend to create a stir. I thanked him for attending. But as the videotape incident suggests, absolutely nothing is easy about this issue.

Well, some things are;  Rights are rights.  Upholding them takes work.  Even the ones that aren’t fashionable.

And in that, Kim Norton is in league with the plantation owners in the old South.

Minneapolis City Councilwoman Alondra Cano makes no bones about the fact that she’s a progressive.  Her Twitter bio begins “Daughter of the Third World Feminist movement”, which may or may not be true, but she’s certainly a product of the sort of unbridled prosperity that First World free-marketeering has wrought; it takes a lot of prosperity to make a public life like hers sustainable.  And thank goodness for that prosperity – since her future as an industrial engineer looks dim indeed.

At any rate, she spent a good chunk of yesterday on social media rooting for Black Lives Matter’s protest at the Mall of America.  And while Ms Cano seems as confused about the distinction between public and private property as the rest of the City Council usually does, I’ll certainly defend her right to protest in favor of or against anything she wants.

Provided, of course, she doesn’t abuse her office to do it.

And we’ve got a problem, there.

Chicago-y:  On her Twitter feed yesterday, she went around and around with some of her critics.

Including, as it happens, some who’d written to her on her City of Minneapolis feedback form – the one people use on the City website to send her feedback.

She took to posting some of the responses she disagreed with.  Note:  While I redacted personal information, including phone numbers, email addresses and home addresses, from the screenshots, Ms. Cano did not:

And this condescending little jape:

When people tried to call “foul” on Twitter, Cano responded:

Emails may be public – but one might ask why a public official is posting citizens data on Twitter, when they contacted her via the City’s contact form.  Because she expects them to be reading Twitter?  Seems unlikely.

And while she pleads “public data”, you’ll note that she only published the names, email and home addresses of detractors, not supporters.

In short, Cano used her city social media presence and city-supplied data to try to intimidate constituents who disagreed with her.  Furthermore, she used city-supplied data to stump for Black Lives Matter.  While Cano has every right to believe what she wants, and protest on their behalf, using data from a city web form to intimidate citizens is grossly inappropriate.

It’s hard out there for a member of a major urban political elite.

So while Ms. Cano – an elected officeholder and high-ranking member of a power structure that has boundless power over a major American city – may try to eke out a shard of victimhood out of the fact that anyone would ask…:

I haven’t seen the term “womyn” used unironically in twenty years. Minneapolis is truly a commemorative museum of progressivism.

…I’m going to ask anyway.

I posted four questions to Ms. Cano – although I suspect I’ll be blocked from her Twitter feed long before she reads them, even if she did.  But for the record, here they are:

1. Why are you, Ms. Cano, using Twitter to respond to feedback that came to you via the feedback from on the city website?  She can’t possibly believe that the correspondents were going to read her on Twitter, did she?
2. While it may be true that emails from the feedback form are “public”, Twitter is hardly a data practices request, now, is it?
3. Is it proper for a city councilwomen to use data from a public website to shape opinion for a private group?  Black Lives Matter is not city business!
4. In what way is posting citizens’ home phones, addresses and email addresses not intimidation?  And is it proper to use social media to intimidate people at all, whether on behalf of government or someone completely different?

If you live in Minneapolis, I urge you to ask Ms. Cano exactly that.

And maybe tell her to check her urban liberal privilege.

Want to show a kid today what a real leader is?  Because God knows our current President isn’t teaching them anything.

Tell them what happened in Poland in 1981.  Read this bit from a few years back, about the defection of the Polish ambassador to the US in protest against the Communist repression in his country).

(See around 4:10 as Reagan begins to speak about Poland.  Between there and the “yellow ribbon” moment, around 11:00)

Reagan did more than just have people light candles – read Jay Nordlinger’s excellent “Yellow Ribbon Culture” for all the reasons the “symbolic message” has become meaningless today – he followed up the symbolic message with a mountain of work in public and behind the scenes to undermine the Polish and Soviet regimes, and build up Solidarity and other resistance in the Eastern Bloc, work which eventually brought Communism crashing down.

This, children, is how leadership was done.

Compare that with the wan empty suit that is frittering away his last year in the White House today, and lament.

Rep. Kim Norton – the Rochester legislator who will be serving as Michael Bloomberg’s bag-woman in the coming session – has decided to try to put some numbers behind her increasingly strident and faith-based posturing on guns.  She posted these “survey” “results” on her Facebook page.

How did it work?  I did say it was a liberal trying to do numbers, right?

The results, to date-12/22/15, of a survey sent out by my office to 3 precincts in my district:

Three precincts?  A whole three precincts?

Now, a legislative district has dozens of precincts.   I don’t know exactly how many precincts there are in Kim Norton’s HD25B, but there are a total of 56 in the city of Rochester, and Norton has roughly half the city.  Let’s be (what else?) conservative, and say she’s got 24 of ’em.

Her district also includes a grand total of 39,762 people, over 21 square miles.  It’s a cozy district.

So Norton sent out a “survey” to three precincts – maybe 1/8 of her district.  Which three precincts?  What are their demographics?  Do these three precincts represent her district?  More importantly – why does Rep. Norton think these three precincts represent her district?

Anyway.  So Rep. Norton mails out a survey to three selected precincts.  And here’s what she got back:

1. Are you in favor of background checks for gun show sales, private gun sales, and gifts?
Yes (73) 78%
No (21) 22%
Total 94

Forget the actual question for a moment.  There were 94 answers.

Out of nearly 40,000 people in her district, and out of maybe 3-4,000 (I’m estimating) in the three precincts she favored with her survey, she got less than 100 answers.

That’s one quarter of one percent of her district.

And do you suppose those people are a representative sample of the precincts, much less the district?  Or might they – just possibly! – have been an intensely self-selected sample of people who are motivated not only to pay attention to bulk mail from their DFL Representative, but also driven to fill out an utterly symbolic survey about an issue that Rep. Norton is wrapping herself around?

Remember – most people just don’t care that much.  And if most conservatives are at all like me, they don’t open junk mail from legislators, especially legislators they disagree with.

So I don’t think it’s a stretch to assume that of the .25 of 1% of Norton’s district that opened the mail, read it, were motivated to complete it and send it back to the Representative’s office, a pretty disproportionate chunk were motivated by supporting Rep. Norton’s agenda.

But I’m no professional…

…well,  no.  Wait. I am.  I design samples for research as part of my job.  So I may be a little harder to BS than the average bear.

(Am I wrong?  Please, Rep. Norton; have your people call my people and set me straight.  You have my number.  Operators are standing by).

Sadly, Kim Norton’s typical supporter may not be so lucky.

2. Do you support requiring gun owners to register their guns with the local government?
Yes(66) 71%
No (27) 29%

Total 93

3. With the goal of reducing suicides and impulse shootings, would you support extending the current seven day waiting period between a gun purchase and receipt of the gun?
Yes (64) 69%
No (29) 31%
Total 93

3a. If yes, how many days should the waiting period be?

10 Days (8) 13%
14 Days (18) 28%
28 Days (38) 59%
Total 64

5. Do you support a ban or restriction of sales on:
High Capacity Ammunition Clips of 10 or more bullets? (66) 69%
Exploding Bullets? (68) 72%
Assault rifles or Semi-Automatic guns? (59) 62%
Total 95

Exploding Bullets?

EXPLODING BULLETS?

Y’see, this is why so many Second Amendment activists have such contempt for their opponents’ arguments.

Imagine if you will someone arguing for regulation of healthcare, who proposes banning phrenology clinics, adding standards for blood leeches and healing crystals, and licensing  sexual healing practicioners.  Now, people who actually work in healthcare know that Phrenology was debunked 120 years ago, that leeches and crystals are irrelevant, and Sexual Healing was a Marvin Gaye song – and they get annoyed that someone is not only wasting their time arguing BS, but just a little disgusted that the legislator is finding people incurious enough to get on board to try to logroll the legislation.

10 rounds is not “high capacity”.  “Semi automatic” does not equal “assault” (you awake yet, hunters and skeet shooters?).  “Assault” does not mean “likely to be used in crimes”.

And…exploding bullets.

(Shaking my head, at a loss for civil words, awaiting a line about “guns that go pew pew pew”)

6. Do you believe gun safety and usage training should be required by all gun owners – even those who do not have a hunting license or permit to carry?
Yes (73) 81%
No (17) 19%
Total 90

7. Given these two values, is it more important to:
control gun ownership?
(49) 56%
protect the right of the people to own guns? (39) 44%
Total 88

FYI – These survey results generally mirror those share by scientific polls done across the country.

I’d be interested in seeing the “scientific polls” Rep. Norton is referring to.  But I am under no illusion she knows anything beyond “tacking ‘scientific’ onto a dubious assertion will gull a few of the gullible”.

She’s wrong, of course.  Not that that matters to her, or to the audience she’s trying to reach.

Black Lives matter is planning to protest against a police killing in North Minneapolis via the logical outlet of protesting at the Mall of America.  In Bloomington.

The Mall’s management, remembering the chaos during BLM’s protest the Saturday before Christmas last year, has obtained a restraining order against the protest.

BLM, naturally, is having none of it.  Walter Hudson:

Black Lives Matter has responded with typical victim posturing, claiming that the restraining order would violate their constitutional right to free speech. This proves particularly rich given that the group has deleted comments on their Facebook page and blocked this author from commenting. Apparently, their loose interpretation of free speech only applies to their own.

It’s worth noting that when he dismissed previous charges against BLM protest organizers, Hennepin County Chief Judge Peter Cahill signaled that a restraining order such as the one currently sought was necessary to secure the mall’s property rights.

Of course, property rights are on an equal plane with speech rights (or are when courts and legislation haven’t perverted both outside their original intents). BLM seems to have trouble distinguishing between public and private property.

Perhaps staging a counterprotest on Nekima Levy-Pounds’ lawn would get the point across.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Grandma, what a big passport printer you have.  The better to vet you with, my dear.

I’m sure it’s no problem, the authorities will just  cross check any person coming in from those countries against the court records from there.  They (Syria, Libya, Pakistan, …) have computerized, up to date, accurate records of every criminal and suspected terrorist online and available to the TSA don’t they?

Joe Doakes

As the US gets more fussy about American citizens showing their papers on demand, it’s funny – funny weird, not funny ha ha – that they’re getting less so with foreigners.